Harland Financial Solutions Announces New CRM Software

Wednesday, May 23, 2001

Press release from the issuing company

Orlando, May 22, 2001 -- Harland Financial Solutions, a division of John H. Harland Company (NYSE: JH), today announced the release of its new CRM software, Touch an enterprise-wide CRM solution that allows a financial institution to manage virtually every aspect of its customer relationships, at every point of contact.
Major capabilities include contact management, sales tracking, referral management, problem resolution and escalation, campaign management, and prospect management.
Customer relationship management is about putting the customer at the center of the financial institution's focus. Harland Financial Solutions' development strategy has focused on maximizing the overall connectivity between the CRM solution, Touch/, and the financial institution's other technologies including core processing, deposit and loan origination, and MCIF systems.
"In 2001 and beyond, CEO's of high-performing financial institutions will no longer be satisfied with loosely integrated technologies that prohibit them from leveraging and retaining their most profitable customer relationships," says John O'Malley, president of Harland Financial Solutions. "Our experience in business intelligence and other delivery channel solutions will enable us to deliver the most comprehensive CRM offering for financial institutions."
Harland Financial Solutions has more than 6,000 financial institutions using its software products and services. According to O'Malley, that puts the company in an excellent position to drive integration to a higher level than ever achieved in the industry.
Customers of Harland Financial Solutions' widely installed core processing software, the Ultradata System, already enjoy connectivity with Touch/. In addition, Harland Financial Solutions plans to integrate the functionality of Touch/ with its popular Deposit Pro¨ and Laser Pro¨ compliant deposit and loan origination systems.
Touch/ has the kind of advanced CRM capabilities demanded by progressive, service-oriented organizations. However, the Touch/ system also provides institutions with the option to incorporate key pieces of information from their MCIF system.
Scott Hansen, vice president of marketing for Harland Financial Solutions, pointed out, "MCIF data can provide Touch/ with the total view of the customer relationship, including relationship profitability, buying propensity by product, identification of at risk households, and promotional campaign history. We made sure that our new Touch/ system would be fully integrated with our MAX$ELL family of MCIF products right from the start."
Hansen added, "Despite the strong leadership position we enjoy in the MCIF and credit union core processing business, we have adopted an open systems approach, with Touch/ being built to accept data from any MCIF or core processing system, not just our own," he said.
"We've been able to come to market at a very affordable price point due to three main factors," said O'Malley. "First, Touch/ was built from the ground up to serve only financial institutions. Staying focused like that allowed us to concentrate on delivering just the functionality financial institutions need, rather than building and maintaining an application with the much broader capabilities necessary to serve any industry. Second, Touch/ was built to run in a conventional Microsoft environment. Most institutions will find that their existing network infrastructure and PCs are already powerful enough and configured to run Touch/. Finally, we've designed Touch/ to be easily configurable to each institution's unique needs, while keeping the entire implementation process highly turnkey. Keeping up-front costs to a minimum is a key concern for most institutions."